"Harkless!" exclaimed the judge. "Why didn't some one think of that long ago?"

"Then you approve?" asked Keating.

"Yes, I think I do!"

The Amo man shook hands with him. "We'll swim out," he exclaimed. "It will be the same everywhere. A lot of the old crowd themselves will be swept along with us when we make our nomination. People feel that that Cross-Roads business ought never to have been allowed to happen, and they'd like to make it up to him some way. There are just two difficulties, Halloway and Mr. Harkless himself. It's a sure thing that he wouldn't come out against Kedge and that he'd refuse to let his name be used against him. Therefore, we've got to keep it quiet from him; the whole thing has to be worked quietly. The McCune folks were quiet until they thought they were sure; we've got to be quieter still. Well, we've made out a plan."

"And a plan that will operate," added Mr. Bence. "For the name of Harkless shall--" Mr. Keating interrupted him energetically:

"We explain it to all the Halloway delegates, you see, and to all the shaky McCune people, and interview all the undecided ones. The McCune crowd may see them afterwards, but they can't fix men in this district against John Harkless. All we've got to do is to pa.s.s the word. It's all kept quiet, you understand. We go into the convention, and the names of Halloway and McCune are placed before it. Then will come a speech naming Harkless--and you want to stuff your ears with cotton! On the first ballot Harkless gets the scattering vote that was going to nominate McCune if we'd let things run, and Halloway is given every vote he'd have got if he'd run against McCune alone; it's as a compliment; it will help him see how things were, afterwards; and on the second ballot his vote goes to Harkless. There won't be any hitch if we get down to work right off; it's a mighty short campaign, but we've got big chances. Of course, it can't be helped that Halloway has to be kept in the dark; he won't spend any money, anyway."

"It looks a little underhanded at first glance," said Warren Smith; "but, as Miss Sherwood said, you've got to be a little underhanded sometimes, especially when you're dealing with as scrupulous a man as John Harkless. But it's a perfectly honest deal, and it will be all right with him when he finds it's all over and he's nominated."

"It's a plain case," added Boswell. "We want him, and we've got to have him."

"There's one danger," Mr. Keating continued. "Kedge Halloway is honest, but I believe he's selfish enough to disturb his best friend's deathbed for his own ends, and it's not unlikely that he will get nervous towards the last and be telegraphing Harkless to have himself carried on a cot to the convention to save him. That wouldn't do at all, of course, and Miss Sherwood thinks maybe there'd be less danger if we set the convention a little ahead of the day appointed. It's dangerous, because it shortens our time; but we can fix it for three days before the day we'd settled on, and that will bring it to September 7th. What we want of you, judge, is to go to the convention as a delegate, and make the nominating speech for Mr. Harkless. Will you do it?"

"Do it?" cried the old man, and he struck the table a resounding blow with his big fist. "Do it? I'd walk from here to Rouen and back again to do it!"

They were all on their feet at this, and they pressed forward to shake Briscoe's hand, congratulating him and each other as though they were already victorious. Mr. Martin bent over Helen and asked her if she minded shaking hands with a man who had voted for Shem at the first election in the Ark.

"I thought I'd rightly ort to thank you for finishin' off Kedge Halloway," he added. "I made up my mind I'd never vote for him again, the night he killed that intellectual insect of his."

"Intellectual insect, Mr. Martin?" she asked, puzzled.

He sighed. "The recollection never quits ha'ntin' me. I reckon I haven't had a restful night since June. Maybe you don't remember his lecture."

"Oh, but I do," she laughed; "and I remember the story of the fly, vividly."

"I never was jest what you might exactly call gushin' over Kedge,"

Mr. Martin drawled. "He doesn't strike me as havin' many ideas, precisely--he had kind of a symptom of one once, that he caught from Harkless, but it didn't take; it sloshed around in his mind and never really come out on him. I always thought his brain was sort of syrupy.

Harkless thought there was fruit in it, and I reckon there is; but some way it never seems to jell."

"Go on," said Helen gayly. "I want to hear him abused. It helps me to feel less mean about the way we are treating him."

"Yes; I'm slickin' over my conscience, too. I feel awnrier about it because he done me a good turn once, in the Hayes and Wheeler campaign.

I went to a meetin' to hear him speak, and he got sick and couldn't."

Warren Smith addressed the company. "Well, is this all for the present?"

he asked. "Is everything settled?"

"Wait a minute," said Keating. "I'd like to hear from the 'Herald' about its policy, if Miss Sherwood will tell us."

"Yes, indeed," she answered. "It will be very simple. Don't you think there is only one course to pursue? We will advocate no one very energetically, but we will print as much of the truth about Mr. McCune as we can, with delicacy and honor, in this case, but, as I understand it, the work is almost all to be done amongst the delegates. We shall not mention our plan at all--but--but, when the convention is over, and he is nominated, we will get out an extra; and I am so confident of your success that I'll tell you now that the extra will be ready the night before the convention. We will contrive that Mr. Harkless shall not receive his copy of the paper containing the notice of the change of date, and I think the chance of his seeing it in any Rouen paper may be avoided. That is all, I think."

"Thank you," said Keating. "That is certainly the course to follow."

Every one nodded, or acquiesced in words; and Keating and Bence came over to Helen and engaged her in conversation. The others began to look about for their hats, vaguely preparing to leave.

"Wait a minute," said the judge. "There's no train due just now." And Minnie appeared in the doorway with a big pitcher of crab-apple cider, rich and amber-hued, sparkling, cold, and redolent of the sweet-smelling orchard where it was born. Behind Miss Briscoe came Mildy Upton with gla.s.ses and a fat, shaking, four-storied jelly-cake on a second tray. The judge pa.s.sed his cigars around, and the gentlemen took them blithely, then hesitatingly held them in their fingers and glanced at the ladies, uncertain of permission.

"Let me get you some matches," Helen said, quickly, and found a box on the table and handed it to Keating. Every one sat beaming, and fragrant veils of smoke soon draped the room.

"Why do you call her 'Miss Sherwood'?" Boswell whispered in Keating's ear.

"That's her name."

"Ain't she the daughter of that old fellow over there by the window?

Ain't her name Fisbee?"

"No; she's his daughter, but her legal name's Sherwood; she's an adop----"

"Great Scott! I know all about that. I'd like to know if there's a man, woman, or child in this part of the country that doesn't. I guess it won't be Fisbee or Sherwood either very long. She can easy get a new name, _that_ lady! And if she took a fancy to Boswell, why, I'm a bach----"

"I expect she won't take a fancy to Boswell very early," said Keating.

"They say it will be Harkless."

"Go 'way," returned Mr. Boswell. "What do you want to say that for?

Can't you bear for anybody to be happy a minute or two, now and then?"

Warren Smith approached Helen and inquired if it would be asking too much if they pet.i.tioned her for some music; so she went to the piano, and sang some darky songs for them, with a quaint suggestion of the dialect--two or three old-fashioned negro melodies of Foster's, followed by some rollicking modern imitations with the movement and spirit of a tinshop falling down a flight of stairs. Her audience listened in delight from the first; but the latter songs quite overcame them with pleasure and admiration, and before she finished, every head in the room was jogging from side to side, and forward and back, in time to the music, while every foot shuffled the measures on the carpet.

When the gentlemen from out of town discovered that it was time to leave if they meant to catch their train, Helen called to them to wait, and they gathered about her.

"Just one second," she said, and she poured all the gla.s.ses full to the brim; then, standing in the centre of the circle they made around her, she said:

"Before you go, shan't we pledge each other to our success in this good, home-grown Indiana cider, that leaves our heads clear and our arms strong? If you will--then--" She began to blush furiously and her voice trembled, but she lifted the gla.s.s high over her head and cried bravely, "Here's to 'Our Candidate'!"

The big men, towering over her, threw back their heads and quaffed the gentle liquor to the last drop. Then they sent up the first shout of the campaign, and cheered John Harkless till the rafters rang.

"My friends," said Mr. Keating, as he and Boswell and the men from Gaines drove away in Judd Bennett's omnibus, "my friends, here is where I begin the warmest hustling I ever did. I want Harkless, everybody wants him----"

"It is a glorious idea," said Mr. Bence. "The name of Harkless----"

Keating drowned the oratory. "But that isn't all. That little girl wants him to go to Congress, and that settles it. He goes."

That evening Minnie and her father were strolling up and down the front walk together, between the flowered borders.

"Do you give up?" asked the judge.

"Give up what? No!" returned his daughter.

"She hasn't told you?"

"Not yet; she and Mr. Fisbee left for the office right after those men went."

"Haven't you discovered what the 'something about politics' she's doing for him is? Did you understand what she meant by 'Our Candidate'?"

"Not exactly."